Holding on tight – NPM and the New Zealand performance improvement framework

The New Zealand Government's Performance Improvement Framework (PIF) is aimed at public sector organisational improvement. The PIF exemplifies how the characteristics of new public management (NPM) challenge the evolution of performance systems attempting to go beyond performance management. The paper provides an empirical example of the operation of the PIF, using a theoretical frame derived from the literature. The analysis suggests that the PIF design does not yet mitigate the effects of gaming, synecdoche, and reputation-protecting behaviour. The common graded ratings continue to hold the attention of those to whom the PIF is important, acting as a proxy for the whole performance of the organisation. This is a case study of how, despite promising adaptations, performance improvement efforts remain hampered by NPM limitations.     

Is Public Service Motivation Changeable? Integrative Modeling with Goal-Setting Theory

This study proposes that Public Service Motivation (PSM) can be changeable by unique characteristics of public organization. The proposition is applied for the integration between PSM theory and goal-setting theory that is inevitable to better understand the motivation phenomena for the organization. The integration model consists of two sub-mechanisms: 1) the moderating role of goal characteristics on the relationship between Public Service Motivation and work motivation, and 2) the mediating role of PSM on the relationship between goal characteristics and performance. The model suggests empirically testable five theoretical propositions with methodological strategies. Finally, theoretical implications and future study are discussed.     

Environmental Stressors and Food Security in China

This article considers the immediate forces influencing China’s food system and food security. By immediate is meant events of the reform period, from the late 1970s to 2008. It begins by asking the question that has preoccupied specialists since the publication of Lester Brown’s Who Will Feed China? in 1995: How much arable land does China have? Is that land area sufficient to insure grain sufficiency? To insure food security? The article focuses on the human pressures on the food production environment, and then treats the effects of socioeconomic change: land, air, and water degradation. The core of the article examines six responses of the state to both perceived and actual environmental stressors: policy restricting arable land conversion, China’s one-child policy, investment in irrigation systems, the South–North Water Diversion Project, large-scale afforestation and reforestation campaigns, and the program to convert marginal agricultural lands to forests and grasslands.     

Exporting to China and ASEAN countries： Perceived advancement in marketing competencies and export performance

Malaysians firms have made inroads into the non-traditional export markets. Such ventures are expected to result in increased knowledge about the marketing systems that are posited to be different from the traditional export markets. This paper reports on the perceived improvement in marketing competencies of Malaysian exporters. The results of data analysis show that there are five dimensions of marketing competency. In ranking order, segmenting and targeting competency is ranked highest followed by product management, export management, product differentiation and promotion. Multiple regression analysis was performed to test the explanatory power of each marketing competency on export performance of firms exporting to China and ASEAN countries. The result revealed that none of the marketing competency explained the variation in export performance for the China market. However, among exporters in ASEAN countries, it was noted that promotion competency resulted in a negative impact on both measures of export performance. Product competency is positively associated with financial measure of export performance. Competencies in segmenting and targeting, and export management are positively associated with non-financial performance.     

Laughter and Liability: The Politics of British and Dutch Television Satire

Contemporary politicians face immense rhetorical and communicative challenges. Performing on the intertwined stages of politics, media (including Internet) and everyday life, they need to master diverse and contrasting repertoires of talk. Political communication research, at present, has ignored the question of how politicians face and experience these challenges, and how they reflect on the new communicative field. In this article, we begin to redress this situation by analysing and comparing the motives, experiences and reflections of politicians who appeared in the British satirical TV show, Have I Got News for You, and its Dutch adaptation, Dit was het Nieuws. Based on in-depth interviews with seven Dutch and 14 English MPs, we conclude that they draw from three repertoires to legitimise and reflect on their participation: a strategic, indulgent and anti-elitist repertoire. The first repertoire is predictable in the context of current political communication research, whereas the latter two add new dimensions of pleasure and bottom-up representation to it.     

Divergent fates: company unions and employee involvement committees under the railway labor and national labor relations acts

Well known is that the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA, 1935) in the United States places a largely per se ban on nonunion employee representation (ER) groups which deal with employers over a term or condition of employment. Much less well known is that America’s other labor law, the Railway Labor Act (RLA, 1926), takes a different approach and permits employers to operate such councils and committees as long as they do not perform a collective bargaining function or interfere with workers’ free choice of a bargaining agent. Thus, under the RLA Delta Air Lines is able to operate what is today the closest living approximation to a 1920s-style ER plan while hundreds of other companies (e.g. Polaroid) under the jurisdiction of the NLRA have been forced over the years to disband similar groups on grounds they are a proscribed company union. No study to date has explored the history behind the RLA and NLRA’s divergent treatment of nonunion ER groups so this article takes a first look. The main part of the story covers the 1920–1935 period and examines the events, people, and experiences associated with company unions and ER in, respectively, the rail and manufacturing industries and why the legislative outcome in the former was a permissive stance on nonunion committees but prohibitive in the latter. The last part of the paper fast-forwards the RLA-NLRA story from the 1930s to contemporary law and practice in order to demonstrate how “history matters” when it comes to what employers can and cannot do with nonunion representation groups, such as works councils, participation and involvement committees, and dispute resolution forums.     

Look at Detroit: The United Auto Workers and the Battle to Organize Volkswagen in Chattanooga

ABSTRACT

On February 14, 2014, workers at Volkswagen’s new plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, voted 712 to 626 against being represented by the United Automobile Workers of America (UAW). The result capped one of the most high-profile organizing campaigns of recent years, with most media accounts anticipating a UAW victory, especially as VW had declared that it would not oppose the union. The VW election is also now attracting scholarly interest, with accounts stressing the role of external opposition – especially from conservative politicians and lobby groups – along with the UAW’s over-reliance on partnerships with German actors. Providing a detailed analysis of the campaign, this article recognizes the importance of these factors, but also argues that an important role was played by the UAW’s strong association with the domestic automakers, and especially with Detroit, their historic base. Citing the fact that foreign automakers had expanded since the 1980s while the domestics had contracted, opponents effectively linked the UAW with economic decline. These arguments swayed many workers. Placing the VW story within the broader struggle of the UAW to organize a foreign-owned auto plant, the article also stresses structural obstacles, especially the location of Greenfield plants in areas of low union density.     

Socio-political tensions in Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) development in low-income Asian cities

International development agencies, with the help of the central government, support building state of art Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) in low-income Asian cities. However, BRT investment over indigenous modes of mobility is creating socio-political tensions at the local level. This article uses multi-level governance as a theoretical lens to examine the relationships among actors in BRT investment decisions in Bandung and Surabaya, Indonesia. The research finds that local stakeholders can distort national and supranational policy initiatives totally or in a way that while projects are delivered, they are of limited use to the local communities they intended to help.     

Does fertiliser use improve household welfare? Evidence from Ghana’s cocoa industry

This article analyses welfare impacts of fertiliser adoption using data collected from 838 cocoa farm households in the four key cocoa-producing regions in Ghana. Using propensity score matching (PSM), the study indicates that application of fertiliser leads to significant gains in farm yields, farm income, consumption expenditure, consumption expenditure per capita, and value of productive farm assets. The article concludes that cocoa-specific programmes such as Cocoa High Technology (Cocoa Hi-tech), initiated to intensify the application of improved farm technologies such as fertiliser, should be strengthened through effective and efficient management systems.     

Facilitating industrial symbiosis programmes in developing countries: reflections from Gauteng,South Africa

This viewpoint reflects on how to improve the process of introducing facilitated industrial symbiosis programmes (FISPs) to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries. Although FISPs are a long-established industrial practice, their formal introduction to SMEs in developing countries has only recently begun, mostly through support from international development agencies. Based partly on anecdotal evidence from Gauteng, South Africa, we identify six key questions which need to be addressed to improve the process of facilitating FISPs.